Since we’ve been a roll with comhráite cat (naisc thíos), how about a diagram showing some of the features of a cat’s face? The above graphic show various features of a cat’s face, most of which are shared with other animals and with humans, so you can get double mileage out of the vocabulary.

One of the features doesn’t occur in humans at all. Any guesses? We’ll go through the rest of the terms alphabetically with a few sample sentences and eventually work our way down to that one.

The common theme for these sentences will be counting, mostly one (amháin) or two (dhá), but in the case of the whiskers, six (sé). And then there’s Cú Chulainn, with some blanks for you to fill in to complete the sentence about him!

éadan: Tá éadan amháin ag cat. A cat has one forehead. In fact this would be true for most animals, except a few mythological ones, like Cerberus, who would have trí éadan, or a hiodra, which would have naoi n-éadan, the extra “n-” being prefixed for eclipsis.

guaire: Tá sé ghuaire ag an gcat sa phictiúr. The cat in the picture has six whiskers. De ghnáth, bíonn ceithre ghuaire is fiche ag cat.

Now for the feature that doesn’t apply to people, na scannáin nicteacha, the nictitating membrane, also known as “the third eyelid” (an tríú caipín súile). Humans don’t have this membrane as such, but we do have a vestigial remnant of it in the corner of our eyes, the “plica semilunaris,” which I had absolutely never heard of prior to writing this blog. One nictitating membrane would be “scannán nicteach amháin.” And that phrase, by the way, helps explain why Irish has such a distinctive word for a film or movie (scannán) — the word existed in Irish before movies and meant “membrane,” “pellicle,” or “velum.”

Comments:

I am learning Irish with Duolingo. I also have the pimsleur method CD set. I have had a long time interest in this language – learning a little here and there. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to Ireland but I keep learning as I have time. I tell myself at least I know more Irish than the average American! Ha!
This cat face diagram is more advanced than I am . I was reading some of it.

@Heather Rushing Tá áthas orm go mbíonn tú ag léamh an bhlag. I’m happy that you are reading the blog. Hope you like the cat diagram, even if you said it is kind of advanced. I hope you continue enjoy the Transparent Language products for Irish. Tús maith leath na hoibre!